The End
by Kraven Ergeist
Summary: A brief oneshot outlining the occurences after Third Impact


**Evangelion Fan Fiction******

**The End**

By Kraven Ergeist (Formerly known as Draco Delphinus)

Disclaimer: _You_ know I don't known Evangelion. _I_ know I don't own Evangelion. _Gainax_ sure as hell knows I don't own Evangelion. So there, it's settled, I don't own Evangelion. Now let's more on to bigger things, shall we?

xxxxx

A flash of dark, a touch of reality, and he awoke, his tormented soul all but dead. His life was nothing. His wants, his needs, his every desire meant nothing. That was what the world had instructed him in since the day he walked on his own two feet. So why now, above all, did he feel so empty.

He was staring up at the sky, a cold, black empty thing that seemed to assume it necessary to dwindle Shinji's mood another notch of two. As though his attitude could sink any lower. What was going on? Why was he still alive? Why would the world not let him end his life? What did he have to do? What did he have to do to undo the burdens that life had so unjustly placed on his shoulders by squirting him into existence?

A hard condensed mass grazed the back of his head, as course grains of sand and once living biomaterial composing the empty beach where he and one other lay, all but forgotten to even themselves. That was all. Yes. Dwindle into nothing, let darkness consume them and take their pain away.

But despite all pain and sorrow, Shinji still found strength in his bones to carry him towards the girl beside him. What worth did his life posses? What worth did anything possess in this black expansive excuse for a world?

The End was near. The End was near, and Shinji was ready. He wanted it to end. Desperately. Everything he had known to posses any semblance of value in all things in life and the world around him had been ripped form existence by some unseen and unstoppable force. He and his friends were victims of an oppressive force against which no will could restrain. Fighting an enemy for an evil man, whom no good could wash out. And here he found himself contemplating the life of a girl, with whom no respite could be gained.

What semblance of purpose, what masquerade of value or necessity lay before him, in the body of this girl and his own heathen flesh? Of all the horrible things he'd been through in his life, he still found himself confounded by yet another. He was killing her. What good has she done? What value did she have to him? Nothing! That was it! Nothing! Asuka had stood above him in ridicule of his emotion. Thanks to the war effort that succeeded in snuffing out any emotion the boy felt, indeed anything and everything else in the world worth saving, now it was within his power to stop it. To end the pain.

An eye opened. And a single entity observed the child, trying desperately to end his pain in a single death stroke. A child whom, despite her own denial time and time again, she could not denounce her feelings for. Even in the state he was in, taking her life, slowly killing her, she could not stop herself from taking his check in her hand, feeling the one bit of warmth left in the world around them.

Shinji stopped. At once, he froze. Throughout all the pain and hardship, he had managed to pull through. Given everything he'd been put through, he could survive anything long enough to finish his task, anything, save for compassion.

Compassion, the one thing never shown to him, he now received. And unfamiliar to this retched, horrible, beautiful deed, he stopped. And wept.

He cried a river of tears that emptied a heart already absent of feeling. Yet as his heart spilled out tears of sorrow, he began to feel again. He could feel the earth and the sun, despite their concealment. And the girl beneath him, he could now recognize as real, as truth, as something worth holding on to.

"I feel terrible," a brief utter of words leapt from her lips to his ears. Words expressing emotion. Any emotion, so long as it kept him alive. Emotion was crucial. Emotion would sustain them long enough to save him.

Breathed of energy, Shinji collapsed once more, on top of the bedraggled form of the second child, his tears flowing freely, his heart a picture of torment.

Asuka regarded the boy once more, his action unknown. He must, she concluded, be completely drenched of logic and common thought. Why else would he act so inhuman?

But the next line wrung from her lips on the notion of a strange question came into her mind.

"Why are you crying?"

Shinji sniffed his tears back in, lifting his head to meet his gaze with Asuka's. Another sniff, he smiled a sad story of love and hate, of loss and loneliness. And these were the words he spoke:

"If I don't cry, who will?"

And that was the end. A lapse of tears and sorrow produced another, and Asuka found herself enveloped in tears, just as Shinji was.

They'd let each other down, they'd been fools to themselves, and they thought that they could live for no one else. But now, through all the hurt and pain, it was time for them to respect that the ones they loved meant more than anything.

The End

Just a quick response to every bad "Sequel to the End of Eva" fanfic I've read. When I watched that final scene, I thought of a thousand ways it could have ended better, even by changing the one line.

So anyway, read and review.

(In case you're wondering, it took me a total of 7 minutes and 43 seconds to start and finish this. And yet, there are days when creativity just leaves me. Writers block sucks.)


End file.
